Behind the Mona Lisa
by M. D. Jensen
Summary: Maybe he falls in love with Mal because she's French and Arthur's always had a thing for French women; maybe it's because she is completely and utterly unattainable, and he just somehow gets off on feeling like hell. Char study. Rated for language.


Disclaimer: not mine.

_Behind the Mona Lisa_

Falling in love with his best friend's wife is a really brainless move, to be honest, but hey, he didn't choose to feel this way. Add it to the ever-growing list of reasons why Arthur keeps his heart in a cage, shut away from his head and secured by a half-dozen padlocks.

Maybe it's because she's French and Arthur's always had a thing for French women; maybe it's because her legs are as long and lean as the Eifel Tower. Maybe it's because she is brilliant and compassionate and daring, because she's got a sparkle in her eyes that could light up the deepest trenches in the ocean. Maybe it's because she actually gives a shit about him, cracks open his smirk-mouthed, sweater-wearing shell and tells him that he's going to be okay.

Maybe Arthur falls in love with Mal because she is completely and utterly unattainable, and he just somehow gets off on feeling like shit and knowing that no, everything is not going to be okay.

Whatever the reason, he's equally fucked.

He's twenty-two when they meet; his virginity has been lost very recently, but, truth be told, it's less been _lost_ and more been _decimated_. While all the other first-year law students are suddenly taking things seriously after four years of drunken joviality, Arthur is realizing that he really likes women and really really likes sex.

His grades are still perfect.

At first he goes mostly for pale-haired girls, but within a month of meeting Mal, he has switched his attention to brunettes.

About three months after he meets Mal, he accidentally says her name in bed, but his partner doesn't seem to notice.

About five months after meeting Mal, Arthur stops it with the one night stands. It's around the same time that he realizes that he loves her, actually fucking loves her, and does not just want to take her for a spin. This realization complicates things a little. But for some reason, Arthur is also very proud of himself.

Cobb probably knows. Cobb sort of has to know, really. He's been inside of Arthur's mind more times than Arthur can count.

"Put anything that you really can't stand me seeing in a safe and hide it behind the Mona Lisa," Cobb told him when they first started out. "I won't look." And Arthur spent a few hours alone in the dream, filling his Mona Lisa box with his deepest fears and his childhood pains and his favorite sexual encounters. Within a few months, he'd let Cobb see most of it anyway, which was good- which left more room in the box for Mal. He wouldn't want her sharing space with his embarrassments, anyway- however secret his affection for her is, he's never been ashamed.

But how can he hide the fact that his projections converge on Cobb twice as fast when Mal is in the dream; how can he pretend that his mind does not make everything lovelier to suit her? If he does know, Cobb doesn't say anything, which Arthur feels makes him a pretty good friend. He also knows, deep down, that it means Cobb knows he isn't a threat.

Which is true, of course, but still feels pretty damn shitty.

Arthur is perfect for the job. He's been perfect for the job since day one. He has the mind of a lawyer and the heart of a scientist, and dreams like the little boy who always made the best sand castles. He is rich enough already that he doesn't mind living for a while on a research assistant's salary; rich enough already that he doesn't flip his shit when that paltry research money is suddenly millions upon millions. He's a good guy; generally speaking, he likes people and he likes it when people like him. He likes playing Frisbee and going to bars and reading scientific journals, and he always throws his change into the donation jar at supermarkets. But he's not a _nice_ guy, really, when it comes down to it; at least, he didn't blink when Cobb pointed out that there would be a _little more flex_ to the budget if they just took this one job that he was offered, and no it's not for the university really, this experiment is being _privately funded_….

In fact, extraction was kind of fun.

His father sent him to law school. Arthur has never gotten around to telling him how many physics and biology classes he audited as an undergrad. Has never gotten around to telling him that as a teenager he kept books on architecture hidden underneath his porn.

(It's not that he would have cut him off, honestly. It's not even that he would have been disappointed. Arthur is simply used to being the good son, simply doesn't know how else to do it. He doesn't hate his parents. And more importantly, he doesn't blame them.)

He doesn't know why he's so comfortable with the thought of living in an _underworld_, as it were; too many action movies as a kid, maybe, or maybe he is half-remembering the kind of lawyer that his father really is.

Arthur has never been an easy man to pin down.

And he wonders if he loves Mal at least in part because she knows this.

Sometimes he stares at himself in the mirror and wonders which one of him she likes best: the researcher or the architect or the jargon-talking corporate liason. Her little brother. Or something more?

(Years from now he will stare into mirrors and thank gods that she can't see him like this, as this man who knows how to carry a gun, this man who is no one's fucking _researcher_ and is certainly no one's _little brother_.)

Sometimes, Mal bakes him cookies for no reason. But she is not a domestic woman; more often than not at the Cobb's house, they end up ordering pizza or Chinese. In light of this, the cookies confuse him, so he doesn't give them much thought. He _certainly_ doesn't wonder how often she bakes cookies for Dom; he certainly doesn't try to find out, to keep a running score.

Falling in love with his best friend's wife is the stupidest thing that Arthur has ever done: far stupider than dropping out of law school for dream research, far stupider than segueing from dream research to dream espionage. It is also the easiest thing he's ever done; how could he not, with her daring eyes and her soft voice and her beautiful, beautiful spirit?

Arthur never asks either of them how they met; he doesn't want to know. He tries not to look at the wedding portrait hanging on their living room wall. The thing is, though, that Dom really is his best friend, the best friend he's ever had, and he doesn't begrudge him his happiness. He's just getting tired of living off its table scraps.

And honestly, he'd never do anything. If Mal were standing in front of him, professing her love, he'd refuse her. He may not be a nice guy, but damn it, he is a good one. He does have to wonder, though- when it's two in the morning and Dom is tending to Philipa, and it's just the two of them alone in the kitchen: does she think about it? Does she wonder too?

Arthur guesses that in the long run, it doesn't really matter.

Either way, he's equally fucked.


End file.
